Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades
The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades belong to the second strongest faction of the Manzama al-Tahqiq [Investigation Organization], which is the left-wing socialist movement known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Abu Jamal is the official spokesperson. The group numbers in the thousands and receives direct military support from Iran through small arms, short-range rockets, and other military supplies.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was established after the 1967 war, and was active in launching military operations against Israel during the following two decades, including the operations it launched during the first intifada that began in 1987. The group became more active in the field of armed struggle during the second intifada - which gave many armed groups an opportunity to reorganize. They are mainly active in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The sons of the commando brigades graduated from the School of Armed Struggle founded by Dr. George Habash and had an unforgettable past. It gave birth to Wadih Haddad and Laila Khaled, who stormed Memory of plane hijackings, embassy bombings, airport storming, and bus hijackings. Prior to the assassination of Comrade Commander Abu Ali Mustafa, the Abu Ali Brigades were operating in the name of the Popular Resistance Forces, and in the midst of the Second Intifada, the forces carried out several specific operations, represented by car bombings in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Lod Airport, below Megiddo Prison, the Mahne Yehuda bombing, and many various bombing operations until the operations were carried out. Inside Gaza and the West Bank, they attacked the enemy’s settlements with all their capabilities.
The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades were founded in 1999 and their name was “Popular Resistance Forces”. The military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine changed its name in 2001 to the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, in memory of the movement’s Secretary-General, who was assassinated by Israel in August 2001. His office in the West Bank town of Ramallah was hit by two missiles fired from a helicopter during the Second Intifada.
After Israel’s assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa, the Brigades which now bore his name, retaliated in the same year by assassinating the right-wing Israeli Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Zeevi, the proponent of the racist transfer theory. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades participated in the conflict in 2008-2009. Its members said that they fired dozens of rockets and mortar shells towards Israeli targets. The group said it had launched 245 missiles, and mortar shells were fired towards Israel during hostilities in early 2011. The Brigades said in a statement it issued at that time: "We will remain in the same resistance trench to continue the struggle in all its forms, and protect people. We work until we defeat the occupation, the battle with the enemy is still continuing".
The ideological orientation of the Brigdes is radical left-wing. It opposed the Oslo Accords , but remained committed to the Palestine Liberation Organization being a reference for the Palestinian people. In the 1970s , the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked planes and participated in the Palestinian uprisings against the Israeli occupation. The activity of its military wing (the Popular Resistance Forces) began with the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, when it attacked occupation patrols, detonated explosive devices, attacked Israeli settlements, detonated car bombs in Israeli cities, and attacked Israeli military checkpoints.
It was the first to fire mortar shells from the Gaza Strip in 2001. One of its most prominent operations was the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in a hotel in Israel on October 17, 2001 in response to the assassination of the Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustafa.
After the aforementioned operation, the Palestinian Authority banned the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades from the Palestinian territories and arrested many of its leaders and the leaders of the Popular Front, most notably its Secretary-General Ahmed Saadat, the perpetrators of the assassination, and the commander of the military wing. It entered into clashes with the Palestinian Authority forces because of its failure to adhere to the truce with the Israeli occupation that the Authority was imposing on the rest of the resistance factions.
In 2002, the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades claimed responsibility for detonating a car bomb in front of the headquarters of the Palestinian-Israeli Liaison Committee in the northern Gaza Strip. In 2006, clashes took place between the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and the Authority forces in several Palestinian cities in the West Bank after the arrest of Ahmed Saadat from prison in Jericho.
The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, and through its commando fighters, attempted many times to carry out specific operations against the leaders of the entity, including an attempt to assassinate Ehud Olmert, Shaul Mofaz, and other senior officers in the enemy army. The men of the Al-Sanadid Brigades, after numerous attempts to break their will by arresting their Secretary General, Ahmed Saadat, and their brave comrades, and before that, the assassination of their former Secretary, Abu Ali Mustafa, were not broken, and this increased their resolve, so they continued to fight the enemy and offer martyrs, one by one, along with their brothers in the resistance factions, to complete their sacred duty to defeat the occupation.
The Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, made up of secularist Marxist-Leninist Palestinian nationalists, refused to relinquish its weapons to the Palestinian Authority as per Mahmoud Abbas' demands on 16 July 2007. Although Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades armed wing mainly complied, the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades stated that they would not cease their resistance until the Israelis gave up their control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
On November 18, 2014, the Brigdes claimed responsibility for an operation in Jerusalem in which its members stormed a Jewish religious institute (Harnov) in Deir Yassin, west of Jerusalem, disguised, armed with shovels, knives, and pistols, which resulted in the killing of four settlers, including a Zionist security man and a rabbi, and the wounding of nine others. The injuries of four of them were described as serious.”
In a statement released after the attack on the Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue in Jerusalem, the PFLP praised two of its members – identified as cousins Ghassan and Oday Abu Jamal – who carried out what the PFLP hailed as an “heroic” act. The group did not, however, claim responsibility for the attack. The PFLP statement had praise for two members who carried out attack but no claim of responsibility. “We commend any act aiming at uprooting Jewish occupation which is desecrating our homeland. This operation, like many other heroic ones, comes as a natural response to the crimes perpetrated by the Israeli occupation and as a form of popular resistance,” the statement said. In a declaration published on November 13 on its website, the PFLP “ saluted the escalating heroic operations against Israeli soldiers and settlers in occupied Palestine, especially in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
The radical group also “urged the masses of our people in every part of Palestine to continue and escalate the popular struggle to an overwhelming popular intifada against the Israeli occupation, and for our people in the Diaspora to escalate their support for the struggle inside.”
In December 2014, the Brigdes considered responding to the Zionist occupation’s violations of the calm in the Gaza Strip and its crimes a sacred duty. They carried out "dozens of martyrdom operations in the Zionist depths and in the Zionist settlements, whether with explosive belts or bullets, and they have stories and tales in the book of history to this day".
The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades state they "shook the throne of the Zionist enemy entity and still do. Its past is full of sacrifices, heroism, and qualitative operations. The enemy’s leaders and usurpers cannot forget it or erase it from their memories because they have swallowed the bitterness of anger and violence of the battalions’ heroes throughout history. As for its present, the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades continue their struggle and struggle. Armed against the Zionist enemy, it is preparing and preparing its commando fighters for the battle of liberation and expelling the despicable Zionist invaders from the Palestinian land. In this regard, we in the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades affirm that we will not give up an inch of Palestine and from its river to its sea to us, and we will resist the occupier until its disappearance, and we pledge Our people, we will not give up their rights and we will continue the path of struggle until the last breath."
According to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine statement on 30 December 2023, an Israeli hostage held by the group since October 7th, 2023 was killed after IDF airstrikes struck the compound where the hostage was being held. The hostage’s identity was not initially released; this is a single source report from the group and had not been verified by the Israeli government or any third party organization.
The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades - the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - said on Saturday that an Israeli soldier held by the Front in Gaza was killed in an Israeli air strike that also injured a number of detainees. Abu Jamal, spokesman for the Brigades, said - in an audio message - that the air strike occurred after a failed attempt by an Israeli special force to free the soldier. He added that they succeeded in thwarting the operation to free the detained soldier, and in preserving his body after his death, in addition to seizing equipment from the attacking Israeli force after it withdrew.
Abu Jamal also said that the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades destroyed and damaged 95 occupation army vehicles since the start of the ground battle in the Gaza Strip.
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